Tagged London

Somewhat of a carny lullaby, ‘Soft Bodies’ is an otherworldly song, its borderline creepy but with a reassuring melody to pull you along! London’s Quimper have produced this ambient gem for a new compilation ‘Soft Bodies Don’t Bleed’ from the fresh UK label Soft Bodies – check out the rest here.

Gorgeous new tune from London’s Sky Between Leaves, this one will put you in a new place. Hopefully a better one! ‘O.B.E’ is an instrumental swoon that tip toes genres lines, but for what its worth the most common tags that stick are krautrock and dream pop. Sky Between Leaves released their debut, self-titled single back in 2011 (vinyl here) or snap up a freebie at Soundcloud. For those of you pondering their name – I quote, “The band’s name was taken from Jarvis Cocker’s narrative of being given glasses as a child and realizing that the holes in the trees were in fact the “sky between the leaves”. That enthralling imagery translates to the band’s sound and the elicited sentiment is simple yet poignant: it’s like awakening from a feverish dream to a wildly glittery reality.”

Joy Division, Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Birthday Party, that’s the caliber of names being thrown around as comparisons to London’s Savages. The post punk four piece are expected to be a defining band, everyone from the BBC to the local hipster are buzzing on these guys. Or girls, should I say. That’s a lot of hype (and pressure) for a band that are yet to deliver their debut album! But on May 7 (a day earlier in the UK) Savages will release their full length ‘Silence Yourself’ via Matador (pre-order here). Attitude and presence has gotten Savages this far but depth of songwriting will be the litmus test in May. Also, whether the throat grabbing appeal of their live shows can be vividly captured on record. ‘She Will’ is the first track released from the album, take a listen below.

CAROUSELS are a noise pop quintet from Cambridge, England, who last Fall issued their second EP, ‘POP’ via Deadly People Recordings. Never one to warp records or over-scratch CDs from constant rotation, POP is no short-lived affair. Each song bleeds into the other, leaving you slightly rattled with delight. Kind of like when you heard “Sueisfine” by My Bloody Valentine for the first time, and I mean really heard it— head spinning, pure joy and what have you.

We got the awesome chance to catch up with Nick earlier this month to see what CAROUSELS were up to and their future plans for this year:Pretty much everyone I know LOVES the POP EP. Like seriously, instantaneously, digs it. Do you feel a lot pressure now from just one EP?

Nick: Not really. I felt a lot of pressure when we put up our first demos a couple of years ago. I never expected those songs to get as much attention as they did and there was this instant pressure to follow them up with loads of gigs and more recordings, but we were just totally unprepared. I’ve kinda learnt from that now. That being said, the live aspect has been difficult. The EP sounds so massive and is mixed in such a particular way that it’s been quite hard to get the live show to match it. We weren’t happy for ages after the EP was released. We’ve had a lot of changes in our live setup since then. It has been hard but we’re getting there now.

Nick: It would be cool to do another tour soon, but it’s difficult because we all have to work. Lucy is 6 months pregnant as well, so I think as of May we’re going to stop gigging for a bit and do some more writing and recording, not for an LP but definitely a single or something… Musically it’s going to be completely different to the POP EP, I’m not sure I’m in the right mood to write another batch of pop songs, I get bored too easily. It should be cool, we’ll see.

How did you and everyone else get into shoegaze / noise pop? Was it just a natural progression, so to speak?

Nick: I can’t speak for everyone else but I got massively into stuff like that when I was about 14 years old. Weirdly it was after watching a live version of Creep on TV and seeing Jonny Greenwood punch his telecaster throughout every chorus. I’d never seen anything like that before and it all went from there really. Everyone else at school was listening to The Strokes and what-not, and I got a kick out of being that weird kid that played people Psycho Candy at full volume.

Curious, what is the scene like in London? Do you hope to stay there as a band in the future?

Nick: I tend to hide away in Cambridge and only get to go to London to rehearse and play gigs so I don’t know much about the current scene really. I’ve been lucky enough to have played with a lot of cool bands in a lot of cool venues over the past few years, and from what I can tell everyone seems genuinely excited and there doesn’t seem to be too much negativity about anything… There’s an abundance of venues and nights that cater for all types of music, so I can’t imagine people find it tough to get gigs… Could be wrong though maybe I’m just not paying enough attention.

Great tune out of left field from London four piece Whistlejacket. I’ve been told these guys are working on a four track EP (recorded by Pablo Clements of UNKLE and Psychonauts). Brits can catch them live on March 8 at The Macbeth (details here). By the way, I recommend taking a peek at Whistlejacket’s comical (literally) Soundcloud page.